Thursday, December 9, 2010

I don't know if you guys caught this yesterday, but Luke Scott of the Baltimore Orioles made an idiot out of himself in an interview with the Answer Man from Yahoo! Sports. After a short discussion about hunting, guns, and conservation, Luke turned his attention to politics - President Obama in particular.

"He was not born here ... I was born here. If someone accuses me of not being born here, I can go — within 10 minutes — to my filing cabinet and I can pick up my real birth certificate and I can go, 'See? Look! Here it is. Here it is.' The man has dodged everything. He dodges questions, he doesn't answer anything. And why? Because he's hiding something ... Something as simple as providing a birth certificate. Come on. If you're born here, there's plenty of documents. But you know what? There's no documentation of him. No legal documentation of him."

﻿﻿﻿﻿Actually Luke, there is.
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I don't even think that's the most obnoxious part of the interview. I mean, if Luke Scott isn't completely braindead, then he's at least severely retarded. But he wasn't saying anything that we haven't been hearing from the Tea Party wingnuts for the past 3 years. The whole 'birther' argument doesn't even really piss me off anymore. In fact, its comical at this point.

The parts of the article that pissed me off most were Scott's opinions about what it means to be an American. Scott is adament that because Obama doesn't embody his particular view of what the American lifestyle should be, he is not an American.

Scott believes that, of all people, Ted Nugent embodies a uniquely American attitude and way of life. For those of you who don't know who Ted Nugent is, he's an outspoken former (shitty) musician who is most famous for the song "Cat Scratch Fever". His political views are slightly to the right of Attila the Hun's, and he is an outspoken champion of the 2nd ammendment. Speaking about Nugent, Scott said:

"This country is built on an attitude. It's a way of life ... I'm a big fan of Ted Nugent because he's a "keep it real" type of guy. I look at Ted Nugent and ... he's an American. He has the core beliefs of what it means to be an American in his heart. He lives by those beliefs and those principles. It's the same beliefs that our forefathers, who fought for our country, [had]."

Its funny that Luke mentions Nugent's beliefs and principles as being 'American', because in this picture Nugent is wearing a symbol that represents rebellion from the very country that Scott claims he embodies the greatest values of. And its also worth noting that donning such a uniform shows at least a degree of support for our country's history of oppressing and subjugating entire races of people.

I guess Ted Nugent and George Washington do have something in common.

Its always the same people who bring up Obama's birth certificate. They're the same people who talk about getting rid of government 'handouts', the same people who talk about cutting taxes for the rich and trickle-down economics. They're the same people who deify Ronald Reagan. They're the flag-wavers, the 2nd Ammendment die-hards, the Tea Party.